Book ReviewsOrigins & Design 17:2

Politically Dead Wrong

What is Darwinism? And Other Writings on Science and ReligionCharles Hodge, Edited and with an introduction
by Mark A. Knoll & David N. LivingstoneGrand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994. 182
pp.

Jonathan Wells

The central administration building at Princeton Theological
Seminary is Hodge Hall, named after the most prominent and respected
Presbyterian theologian in mid-nineteenth-century America. Charles
Hodge taught theology at Princeton for fifty-six years, and his
"Princeton Theo-logy" was a major force in American
culture. Nowadays, however, most people at Princeton Seminary
would rather not talk about him. At the very institution which
rose to prominence under his intellectual leadership, Charles
Hodge is a skeleton in the closet.*

Hodge earned his present oblivion by committing an egregious
act of political incorrectness. He did not advocate racism; in
fact, he was an outspoken defender of the unity of the human family,
in a century when many others considered non-whites to be inferior
species. Nor did he disparage women, or bash homosexuals, or encourage
cruelty to animals, or inhibit academic freedom. No, Hodge's crime
was simply this: he opposed Darwinian evolution.

In the academic culture of the late twentieth century, Darwinism
is the queen of the sciences. The context for all scholarly research
and professional training is no longer Christian theism, but metaphysical
naturalism, the doctrine that nature is all there is. This doctrine
is justified by reference to the biological doctrine that all
living things evolved from a common ancestor by random variations
and survival of the fittest. People who challenge either doctrine
are often shunned in a manner reminiscent of the excommunication
of medieval heretics. Since no one likes to be shunned by one's
colleagues, most academics (including theologians) accept whatever
scientists say about biological origins, no matter how thin the
evidence or speculative the claim. In such an environment, it
is politically incorrect to challenge Darwinism openly, and dead
wrong to oppose it on theological grounds.

Yet that is exactly what Charles Hodge did. Fifteen years after
the first publication of Darwin's theory in 1859, Hodge published
his objections to it in What Is Darwinism? By the turn
of the century Hodge's book was languishing in obscurity, but
it has recently been re-published with help from Mark Noll and
David Livingstone. Noll and Livingstone are historians with a
special interest in the relationship between evangelical religion
and Darwinian evolution, and both have previously written about
Hodge. The present volume combines What Is Darwinism? with
Asa Gray's review of the book and with some of Hodge's other writings
on the subject. It includes an introduction by Noll and Livingstone
and an excellent short bibliography for those interested in further
reading.

A modern reader might be surprised to learn that Hodge was
not a biblical fundamentalist who defended a literal interpretation
of Genesis. Although he was a biblical theologian, he accepted
scientific evidence and interpreted the "days" of Genesis
as geological ages, so biblical chronology played virtually no
role in his critique of Darwinism. Like many of his contemporaries,
he faulted Darwin's theory on scientific and philosophical grounds;
it wasn't warranted by the available evidence, and it made implausible
assumptions. But his principal objections were theological. First,
although Darwin acknowledged that God may have originally breathed
life "into a few forms or into one," he attributed their
subsequent evolution to autonomous natural forces instead of to
God's superintending providence. Hodge objected that Darwinism,
in this respect, was a form of deism (the view that God created
the world but then turned it loose to run by itself).

Second, Darwinism excludes design from nature. According to
"Mr. Darwin's theory," what appears to be design in
living things is actually the result of "blind, unintelligent
physical causes." A theory of evolution could be deistic
and yet be compatible with design in nature, but Darwinian evolution
is inherently random and cannot produce designed results. Human
beings, instead of being the crowning achievement of God's purpose
for creation, are for Darwin an unintended by-product of forces
which had no particular goal. Hodge considered this exclusion
of design "tantamount to atheism."

Why would an exclusion of design be tantamount to atheism?
Like many of his contemporaries in England and America, Hodge
believed that design in nature provided evidence for God's existence.
But Hodge knew classical logic well enough to realize that natural
theology did not warrant the charge that Darwin's exclusion of
design was tantamount to atheism. The logical form of the argument
from design is: If living things are designed, then a designer
(God) exists. In this argument, a denial of design does not entail
a denial of God's existence; to claim that it does would be the
logical fallacy of "denying the antecedent." Darwin's
theory undercut the argument to design, but this did not make
Darwinism atheistic. After all, Immanuel Kant had undercut the
argument from design on philosophical grounds a century earlier,
and Hodge did not consider Kant an atheist. A person may reject
natural theology and still find rational grounds for believing
in God.

The God in which Christians believe, however, created human
beings in His image - that is, by design. In other words, the
Christian doctrine of God entails design. As John Henry Newman
put it in his Letters and Diaries, "I believe in design
because I believe in God; not in a God because I see design."
In effect, this is an argument TO design: If God exists, then
living things are designed. But Darwin's theory denied that human
beings (or any other living things) were designed. In the argument
TO design, this logically entails a denial of God's existence.
If human beings are not designed, then the God of Christianity
does not exist.

Modern scholars sometimes portray Hodge as the defender of
a provincial and outmoded natural theology (the argument from
design played almost no role in Christian theology before the
eighteenth century, and flourished only in nineteenth-century
England and America). But Hodge's opposition to Darwinism was
actually based on a notion of design which is central to the Christian
tradition, and pervades the writings of every major theologian,
so it is a mistake to dismiss him as provincial and outmoded.
Other modern scholars object that Hodge exaggerated Darwin's exclusion
of design. But when Harvard botanist Asa Gray, the most prominent
defender of Darwinism in America, argued that Darwin's theory
was compatible with design, Darwin himself made it clear (in the
conclusion of his Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication)
that Gray was wrong.

So Hodge did not argue for a literal interpretation of Genesis
chronology, nor was he primarily a defender of natural theology.
He faithfully represented the mainstream Christian theological
tradition when he affirmed the centrality of design, and he accurately
represented "Mr. Darwin's theory" when he pointed to
its exclusion of design. The two are utterly incompatible with
each other. Modern scholars who want to preserve a place for Christianity
in the reigning Darwinian paradigm sometimes claim that the two
ARE compatible, but they must be talking about something other
than Charles Darwin's theory, or something other than the Christian
theological tradition.

Design is an essential corollary of Christian belief in God,
but Darwin's theory excludes design and thus logically excludes
belief in God. This is the essence of Hodge's critique of Darwinism.
Hodge wrote in the heat of intellectual battle, however, when
the issues were at least as confusing as they are now. Reading
What Is Darwinism? is not unlike reading classics in the
history of science, in which the central idea is never presented
with textbook clarity, but is always obscured by details and detours
which only a historian could love. As historians, Noll and Livingstone
focus on some of those details and detours in their introduction.
As a theologian, I prefer to go to the conceptual heart of Hodge's
critique, and I found their introduction less penetrating than
it might have been. But I am delighted to see What Is Darwinism?
in print again. The Darwinian controversies are far from over,
and Charles Hodge's contribution to them is as relevant now as
it was in 1874.